


distance

by ghostscribe



Series: ReGuri Week 2020 [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, i promise it ends better than it sounds here -
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26514703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostscribe/pseuds/ghostscribe
Summary: The summit of Mt Silver is nine thousand meters above sea level. Its sheerest cliff is at a right angle. That drop is just over three hundred meters.
Relationships: Ookido Green | Blue Oak/Red
Series: ReGuri Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931590
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	distance

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of drabbles for this year's ReGuri week! The prompts can be found [here](https://reguridiscordserver.tumblr.com/post/627435884456919040/the-reguri-week-2020-prompts-have-been-chosen) if you're interested. I wrote these before the week began because god knows I can't do something for more than two hours at a clip anymore and wouldn't be able to keep up a drabble a day for the week!!!  
> 

So close, and yet so, so far.

Kanto and Johto are considered to be in the same region, so to speak. Individual in their cultures, yes, but intrinsically linked in their location, their climate, their League. It’s the same sky, more so for the two of them than for the regions overseas. Same meteor showers, same glimpse of the same eclipse, same brewing snow clouds over the same mountain that pierces the sky like a knife in his chest.

Mt Silver is a knife.

Its peaks are sheer and treacherous, sharp enough to kill with one wrong step. The air up there is bitterly cold, _sharp,_ it cuts the inside of his throat when he travels beyond the tree line, into the snow cap, spending an eternity moving a few meters up. The blade of the stone is slathered in its gourmet spread of snow, the same snow that threatens to overwhelm, to kill; an avalanche is unpredictable at best and intentionally malicious at worst. Sometimes they seem to be sentient. 

Bitter he is at the way the land plunges into his dreams like a knife in his chest.

Green hates it up there. It’s cold. Inhospitable. Cold. Sharp. Mt Silver pierces the sky and it pierces him, too. 

Red has described him as _the sky_ before, unaware of how intimate the allegory is to his rival. Green muttered back a _don’t say dumb things like that,_ and that was the end of it. 

Mt Silver is further still from Kalos. 

The truth comes out when he visits Snowbelle City with Professor Sycamore, on account of some research. They were en route to the Pokémon Village, a hidden grove of sorts in the depths of the region, and Sycamore had warned Green to _bundle up, it doesn’t get colder than this._

_I’ve been at the peak of Mt Silver for days on end before,_ Green had countered. _It can’t be colder than that._

The Professor looked at him quizzically. _What were you doing up there?_

And the truth came out. Green had intended to give him a simple _my idiot rival lives up there,_ same answer as always, but the way he says it always - it always makes him feel too far from Red, to not even say his name, to merely berate him and carry on about his day.

He distances himself from Red in his day to day life. He could’ve had Lance’s current position at the Indigo Plateau, but it was too close to Red. Mt Silver looms over the plateau and Red’s ghost looms over the Champion’s room, the Hall of Fame, the lobby couch he napped on the day before he challenged the league, the back room where he panicked and shook and cried when the cameras gleamed and the microphones chirped out static interference. 

Too close to Red. Green became a gym leader. That’s far enough away. Sometimes when he visits Red, he tries to tell him about his work, and Red nods along, doesn’t seem to fully understand, and the dissociation is reestablished, and Green returns to work without thinking about Red. 

Distant even in their habits, not by his own volition but by the slowly crumbling state of the so-called hero. Green’s apartment is tidy, perhaps to a fault, seemingly uninhabited at times and at other times covered in neatly organized stacks of books and documents and maps, evidence of research, evidence of the Oak legacy that Green can’t seem to escape. He brushes his hair every morning and straightens his jacket before he goes out. 

Red lives in a cave littered with empty potion bottles and gravel. He’s never brushed his hair a day in his life. His vest is discolored from dirtied snow and blood stains from scraped arms. 

And yet still, Red is too close. Never quite far, no, merely opposite in these ways, merely alien, an outsider always looking in because Green never closed the windows.

_I always go up there to make sure Red didn’t get himself killed._

That was how Green answered Sycamore, spoke before he could really stop himself. Red was never too far from his mind. Never far from his heart.

_So, he_ does _live up there. Is it for training purposes?_

Green did not answer. His throat was too thick with sadness. Fear. Worry. He wonders if he’ll find Red to be nothing but a corpse when he gets home and if he’ll live with that guilt for the rest of his life.

The summit of Mt Silver is as far from sea level as it can be, roughly nine thousand meters up. Green travels to the coast of Cinnabar Island to convince himself of the distance, force himself to swallow his feelings and recognize _he’s not fucking coming home, get used to it,_ and in three hours he’s both failed to keep his composure and paced a rut into the sand. 

The summit of Mt Silver is nine thousand meters above sea level. Its sheerest cliff is at a right angle. That drop is just over three hundred meters.

_Be careful if you go out that way. It’d be enough to kill you if you fell,_ Green told Red.

_I know._

That’s all Red said. Green wasn’t sure how to respond. 

He responded with screaming when he saw Red at the foot of that fall. He’d been at the League and at Cinnabar and in Kalos and yet those three hundred meters were the furthest Red has ever been from Green. It took centuries for him to find a way to safely navigate to the bottom of the pass, to reach Red, and by the time he reached Red he found himself still too far away to reach out, too far to pull him out of the snow, he reached and cried out and the last of the light in Red’s eyes started to fade and Green had let him die alone. Overwhelmed with guilt. Overwhelmed with regret.

Overwhelmed with a cold sweat and a choked breath when he wakes up. 

He’s hyperventilating in this dark room, hand clenched against his chest, as if that’ll help him breathe easier. One hand grips tight at the collar of his shirt, the other covers his mouth, stifles a sob. Green bites his tongue, holds his breath, counts to ten, anything he can do to ease his nerves. 

They do not ease. Red is too far away.

“Red?”

Silence in the room. A nightmare come true. 

“Red.”

Shuffling from outside, relief; and then regret for having bothered Red. 

Not _that_ much regret, though. Green can’t think clearly enough to process anything other than _where’s Red_ and _please god tell me that was a dream._

Red is in the doorway. That was a dream. The answers are plain and simple but Green needs the next minute or hour or day to fully grasp them. 

“Are you okay?”

Red speaks. Red does not speak to very many people, _words are unnecessary,_ but he speaks to Green at length, _I like talking to you,_ and Red does not speak if he is not safe. Red does not speak in Green’s dreams; no one does. Never so far from Red even in his dreams, the muted astral plane.

“Green?”

“I’m good, I’m good, we’re good, it’s okay, every - everything’s…” Green lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding, shuddering and almost painful. “Good. Not sleepin’ well, is all.”

“Mm.”

Words are unnecessary. 

Alola is thousands of miles away from Kanto, a bit further out than Kalos, even. So close is the distance between the island’s biomes, though, so close are they to Ten Carat Hill, to Wela Volcano Park, to Mt Lanakila. There are volcanoes and there are mountains but Alola is a tropical archipelago. The air at its peaks is never so sharp as Mt Silver, never so far from the ground, never so complex a terrain, never quite reaching the same sky.

_See, now you can’t go missing, ‘cause it’s not hard enough to get lost up here,_ Green had joked to Red earlier that day. Such a simple line and such vivid nightmares from it. He regrets having mentioned it at all. He’d regretted it the moment Red gave him half a glare and Green realized that perhaps Red wasn’t so amused.

Words are unnecessary. Green doesn’t bother to ask Red what he was doing because he knows what he was doing, either getting water or giving Pikachu a late-night snack. Red doesn’t bother to ask Green why his sleep hasn’t been restful because he knows why, it’s stress or nightmares or the lingering regret that still lives in his chest no matter how many days or months or years pass by.

(No matter how many times Red tells Green that he is forgiven.)

It is hot and Green feels they’ll both regret cuddling so close in the morning, when the sun is out and they’re both sweaty and groggy, but any distance between them now is unbearable.

Red pulls Green closer, pecks his lips, nestles against him. Words are unnecessary. 

_I’m here,_ in essence, said in these simple gestures. Not so far anymore.

Never so far away ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wherein i realize i kinda combined the _distance_ and _regret_ prompts somehow. neat!! i'll never pull that off again!!!!  
> this was gonna be pure angst but i got sad halfway through and softened it up at the end you're welcome

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to reguri week wherein ghostscribe desperately tries to write after a months long hiatus and lack of muse!!!!!! am i okay?? who knows!!!!  
> hgjfkd tbh though - i am kinda happy getting back into writing. writing for specific prompts is interesting, it's not something i explore very much but hey :0 this is a fun exercise and it gives me an excuse to scream about two (2) husbands  
> these'll all be posted in series throughout the week btw :D


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